I always thought Bellaire was almost like a magnet school or something. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4123936.html HISD, Alief and North Forest fail federal standards By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Houston, Alief and North Forest joined the growing ranks of Texas school districts that failed to make the "adequate yearly progress" mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Statewide, 148 districts — including dozens of charter districts — missed the mark, up from 131 last year. The news was much better, however, for individual schools. A whopping 300 schools managed to get off the "needs improvement" list this year, lowering the number of struggling campuses to 624 statewide. "We're pleased that a growing number of campuses are meeting AYP goals," education commissioner Shirley Neeley said in a prepared statement. More than 50 of the schools that failed to make AYP are in the Houston Independent School District campuses, including Bellaire High School and Sam Houston High. Schools that have been on the list for several years — including Chavez, Jones, Sharpstown, Sterling, Westbury High, Wheatley High, Worthing High and Yates high schools — are required to offer free tutoring to low-income student this year. Parents will have until Sept. 25 to sign up for the extra help, which will begin Oct. 9, district officials said. Several Houston area charter schools, including Gulf Shores Academy and Alphonso Crutch, also failed to make the progress mandated by the federal government. The federal No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush in early 2002, is designed to make sure all students — including poor, minority and disabled children — succeed in reading and math by 2014. Schools must make the grade on math scores, reading scores and graduation or attendance rates.
Bellaire is a large school. How did it become a magnet school? Bellaire does have smart students many coming in through the magnet program. This may be a case where Bellaire got a reputation for being smart cause of the magnet program. The other half is now bringing it down.
Bellaire has many, many smart students. There honors program is one of the best around. However it is a very diverse school. People from every race, creed, color and financial situation go there. With that, comes varying degrees of education. It is a magnet school for language. Go Cards! (bellaire cards, not the STL ones.)
standardized testing really doesnt prove much. Several schools have a policy of "asking" students who will fail to conveniently be "absent" on testing day. They'll retake the test later but those later tests don't actually count towards the federal measure. Also, Bellaire has 4000 kids and is the largest HISD school. In addition, it has students of all social strata, so its unfair to create a single label. Also, it is technically a magnet school (language magnet) but HISD designates practically every school as a magnet school so it's an irrelevant designation. If you use AP scores as a measure, it ranks in the top 100. Point being, stats are easy to manipulate so there's no real point in using them to draw any conclusions about any school.
Not really, since schools are entirely locally controlled. And since Bellaire has such a legacy status, it is literally untouchable by HISD administration. HISD can't unilaterally order Bellaire to cheat since schools themselves are held accountable rather than school districts.
My point is, if the stats are manipulated then HISD or Bellaire HS is doing a crappy job of it. If the stats aren't manipulated then Bellaire HS students aren't doing a good job of passing standardized tests. The merits of standardized tests are another matter.
Anybody with kids in HISD high schools want to talk about the new student class scheduling software? I've heard it's a nightmare.
Do they still call it "Hebrew High"? My sister went there in the 70's. She insists that the movie Dazed and Confused was her biography.
I probably partied with her. I graduated in 1979. Sure looks different now than it did when I went....no more "temporary buildings" and no more smoking area!
I was the last class with the Temp buildings. (90) They did away with the smoking section in 87, not that it stopped us. I'll agree that BHS isn't the same school I attended, but it is still a damn good school for HISD. You have to realize with 5,000+ students, some will pass the curve, and some won't..
Kids were smarter when they started the schoolday smoking ganj in the BHS parking lot listening to "Quadrophenia" at ear splitting volumes.
